D'Anthony Carlos has skated through life always being protected. When you're related to the biggest drug cartel in the DMV you gotta be protected. When all of your uncles are the most feared and respected you automatically garner the same attention...
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"Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven." After reading Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne that always stuck out to me. Imagine a man not only wanting you while on earth, but also in heaven. One could only wish, right? But who wants a man who relies on others for things such as faith? I need a man who knows himself. A man who loves himself then loves me. Self love comes before anything. Don't be too selfish in a relationship to not realize that. -Z.D.
I posted that to my blog then switched tabs. Due to the glare of my laptop screen I could see myself. I was starting to wonder who I really was. Did I really know at 20 years old?
Zipporah better known as Zi or Rah Digga if you're my line sister.
My father named me after Moses' wife from the Bible. Just like Zipporah I was the oldest of 7 sisters. It's debatable if they were talking about Zipporah or another wife of Moses, but she was once referred to as a Cushite woman. Zipporah was said to be from Midian, but my Dad didn't care about technicalities. They never mentioned a name when they said it, so he named me Zipporah.
The Cushites were historically known to be dark skinned and that I was. Dark as molasses. Dark as night and I loved every inch of it. Zipporah means a little bird and my father told me to never let any one clip my wings. To fly far and high until the day my wings grow tired. It was funny that my father gave me a biblical name because his actions screamed that of a sinner. At one point I was a Daddies girl, but life happened..
Simple facts to get out of the way: I'm currently a junior at Howard University and I major in journalism. I currently work on the schools newspaper. I'm a Delta Sigma Theta and I work at Sephora and do makeup and hair on the side. That's just to name a few of my interests and hobbies. People call me the renaissance woman around here. If I can make money doing it, I'll find a way.
A hustler mentality was in my blood passed down from my father. The father I looked up to, but was ashamed to admit we had the same blood. No one knew who my father was and I wanted to keep it that way. It was no ones business in the first place. All it did was invoke fear and nosy ass questions.
Like, "Was your life like The Wire?" "Why are you in college? Aren't y'all rich off the trappin'?" Or the most cringe worthy question of all, "Wasn't your Dad on American Gangsta? Didn't he snitch?" All because of a man named Solomon "The General" Diop.
"The snitches daughter."
That's a title you never wanna have in the hood. The worst title of all. Snitching did him no good because he ended up getting killed in prison. To this day when I go back to our old neighborhood I get dirty looks. I stayed in fights with the kids of my father's victims back when I was younger. That's why my mother moved us from one side of Baltimore to the other. That didn't help because it would follow us forever. My father thought he was doing right by his family. You tell, you get less time, which means the sooner you get to come home to your wife and 7 kids. Things don't always go how you want it to.
